re: Aramaic

>>Glenn Wooden
>>
>>Surely there is a major difference between these situations!!! Jews
>>in Russia will have to learn the langage of the "natives", but for
>>cultural reasons will want to retain their language of heritage. But
>>Jews in their homeland of 2BCE-1BCE palestine would surely use their
>>mother tongue for the vast majority of communication, both verbal and
>>written. They have no need to adapt because the vast majority of
>>life's business would be done with their fellows, except
>>to communicate with any outsiders with whom they would have to deal
>>on a limited basis.
On the surface, perhaps, but the actual situation has some good analogies.
Plus, there are others - why are there Canadians whose native language is
English who produce French literature?
Russian Jews in the Pale lived in a situation very similar to an occupied
territory. Much of their daily business would be done with each other (Yiddish
or Hebrew) but enough would have to be done with the "outsiders" to make it
necessary to have a working knowledge of Russian. Intellectuals (i.e. those who
write books) would be more likely to be able to work in both idioms and to have
an interest in writing both ways. In particular, anyone who wanted to become
involved in anything involving trade or politics would find that useful.
None of these things is definitive of itself, but in the aggregate and given
the multi-cultural environment that we know existed, I can't see any
difficulty.
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